Dying Light: How To Use and Save Your Weapon

There are many types of weapons in Dying Light that you can use like Hammers, Axes or even swords. At first, you’re not going to know the difference between a Brick Hammer and a Claw Hammer. But you are going to quickly pick up that Hammers are fairly fast, one-handed weapons. Axes are much slower to wield, but have higher damage per swing.

Damage is the amount of destruction that a weapon does each time it lands against an opponent. This factor doesn’t take into account swing time, Stamina cost, or anything else. It’s just damage done per hit. More is always better, but there are differences between the types of weapons that make some high damage weapons only somewhat awesome while certain medium-damage choices might be superior.

Durability:

Each time you hit something, there’s a chance of losing some Durability off of your current weapon. Eventually, this causes weapons to break and become worthless. More Durability is always a great thing, regardless of the type of weapon you’re looking at.

There are skills that improve the amount of time you can use your weapons (e.g., Conserve Weapons, a Power skill). There are also other ways to improve your Durability. Each weapon can be repaired only a certain number of times. As long as you have Metal Parts, you can repair a weapon to get its full Durability back. This requires a few seconds, so it’s better to do outside of combat.

Handling:

Handling determines weapon speed. The faster you can swing, the more damage you can deal against enemies in a given amount of time. This is a very important stat, and the higher it goes, the better off you are. Even what looks like a small difference in Handling can actually lead to a major difference in your ability to swing quickly and fend off enemies.

Repairs:

You can repair an item only so many times before it’s just totally worthless. There’s a fine line you must walk with this. If you wait too long to repair your weapons, they can break while still having Repairs Left. That’s awful, because you’ve just wasted all of the time you would have had with that weapon if you’d bothered to repair it. If you repair things when they’re at half of their Durability, you’re wasting tons of attacks. It’s usually best to let your weapons drop into low levels of Durability and then repair them. The icon in the lower-right corner of your screen is a reflection of the Durability for your current weapon. When the icon’s colored section starts to look a bit small for your liking, repair that weapon! When desperate, you can even do this in battle by running away from enemies as you frantically patch together your favorite toy.